Downhill qualifying at round two of the Mountain Bike World Cup in Val di Sole, Italy, saw the Atherton family once again at the top of the list for both the men's and women's results. The GT Factory brother and sister team of Gee and Rachel Atherton showed that whether it is a long physically demanding course like Fort William, Scotland, from last week, or a steep technical run like this week, they are the dominant riders on the circuit.

Rachel Atherton beat rival Emmeline Ragot (Lapierre Gravity Republic) by over six seconds, with Manon Carpenter (Madison Saracen) seven-thousands of a second ahead of world champion Morgane Charre (MS Mondraker) for third.

Canada had three women in qualifying, with two making it through for the final 20 that will race on Sunday. Canadian champion Casey Brown (Dirt Norco) qualified ninth, with Micayla Gatto in 12th. Vaea Verbeecke finished 23rd, just out of qualifying for the Final.

In the men's run, Atherton was sitting three-tenths of a second behind defending World Cup champion Aaron Gwin (Specialized Racing DH) after the second intermediate split. However, he clearly pulled out all stops in the bottom section, to finish 1.362 seconds ahead of Gwin. For Gwin, it was a much better showing than in the opening round, where he finished an uncharacteristically distant 17th. Canada's Steve Smith (Devinci Global Racing) rounded out the top three, two seconds down on Atherton.

Only one other Canadian man qualified for the top-80 and Sunday's Final - Remi Gauvin in 45th place. Kyle Sangers finished 92nd, Kirk McDowall was 97th and Forrest Riesco was 113th. Canadian national champion Matt Beer did not start.

In the new and separate Junior men's competition, Phil Atwill (Madison Saracen) finished first in the seeding run, followed by round one winner Noel Niederberger (Gstaad-Scott) and Innes Graham (MS Mondraker). Canada's Mark Wallace (Devinci Global Racing) was 15th and McKay Vezina 33rd.